I have no idea how rugby works. But I remember seeing a bit of a match on the TV at a bar where I was waiting for my boyfriend-at-the time a few years ago. I was always waiting for my boyfriend-at-the-time back then. Rugby was on and I, then as now, had no idea what was going on, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. All of those men in shorts slamming into each other! It was chaos.
So, now. Today. Waiting for no one, I just watched 12 and half minutes of New Zealand v. South Africa in a rugby championship. Most of that time went by with introductions to the players in cute baseball card frames folding their giant arms in front of their giant chests and then unfolding them just before they disappear and the next set of cards comes up. Oh the theater of it! Then a little locker room footage where the pre-game camaraderie seems really quite sweet and so masculine I don't even know to do with it. Then the national anthems, during which the players stood in a long line with their arms around each other. They all sang along, some of them with their eyes closed looking really soulful and earnest. And then - ohmygoodness - the New Zealand team did a DANCE all in unison with foot stomping in kind of a wide 2nd position plie. They slapped their biceps and stuck out there tongues. Wow.
Then the game started and it was, yup, chaos. A ball moves around, and then they collide and end up with it looks like 6 or 10 guys in a big pile and more guys standing by the pile fending other guys off with an arms outstretched stay-away sort of gesture. Sometimes someone kicks the ball. Very high. Sometimes there is a pause, and one of the players throws the ball in to the rest, and there is this beautiful thing where a bunch of them jump up, and they lift someone in the center up high to grab the ball. Or he jumps up and they catch him and let him down? It just looks like he levitates for a moment.
More colliding, more piles. Slow motion replay of 2 very large men ramming their shoulders into the torso of another very large man. The announcers keep mentioning something called a 22.
I still have no idea how rugby works.
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